Review of 2022

As another year draws to a close it's time for my annual review post.

This past year was the 10th anniversary of the blog, and it still feels like it's going strong and appealing to most of the people who read it. The biggest thing on it this year has been the 52 Games project. I'll be doing a roundup post for this separately, but for those who haven't been aware of it, it was my attempt to play at least 52 different games and/or sets of rules during the course of the year. Needless to say I reached, and exceeded, my target, and you will have been treated to writeups of all of the games, in some form or another. 

Whilst the project did rather spread my gaming activity around, I still played some of my personal favourite miniatures games - HOTT, Galleys & Galleons, Gaslands and relative newcomer Blood, Sweat & Cheers. I did a few more tweaks on some of my own rules as well, trying out new ideas for my ECW Portable Wargame and even briefly resurrecting my jousting game, Atteint!

Outside of gaming my wife, daughter and I reached our target for this year's Frocktober, and we all took new acts on to the burlesque stage, as well as revisiting older acts.

So many thanks to all of you who read, enjoy and comment on this blog, as well as those of you who do blogs of your own and provide me with the inspiration I sometimes need.

Anyway, on we go with my usual review format; the top-viewed post from each month.

January

With Pike And Musket - I added this gem to my collection of old-school wargames books at the start of the year. And during the year I played several of the scenarios from it.

February

Galley Redesign - We went away for a few days at the end of February to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and I took a little modelling project with me; to redesign my simple lolly-stick ancient galleys. I managed to get a look I liked, remodelled my existing ships and added new ones to the fleets as well. Naturally I still have a load waiting to be painted.

March

A Target Of Opportunity - Rummaging through my Google Drive I found a downloaded copy of Nordic Weasel's 'Five Men In Normandy' WWII skirmish game, and spent an enjoyable few days working through a Eastern Front campaign. This post was the most recent mission I've played to date; a hit on a high-ranking German officer by a squad of Russian soldiers.

April

Another Return To ... The Arena Of Death - We've done a little bit of Gaslands this past year. This was one of the earliest games we played, in which I used my tank-turret touting truck, Siberian Khatru.

May

Bolt Action Pictures - I got a new phone in May, and spent a club evening trying out the camera (which is a lot better than the one on my previous phone). That's it. That's all there is to what somehow became May's most popular post.

June

Bolt Action French - This was another Bolt Action photo post, but it's popularity (in terms of view) was less about the content and more about the comments, where I had the first appearance of 'Simon', a vile troll who has spent the six months since then posting daily abuse to the comments section of this blog. Obviously since I get to pre-approve comments, no-one else sees them, but that doesn't stop him posting up to six or seven times a day, despite stating three times (at least) that he was 'never going to read this blog again'.

'Simon' needs to get a life. 

Anyway, the pictures of Ian's Bolt action French are nice, and that's what really matters. 

July

Unorthodox - 3 - Naturally I have played Galleys & Galleons during the past year - not only with my remodelled ancient vessels but also with some of my less conventional ships. In July I did an experiment where I tried out ships with the Unorthodox propulsion trait against a variety of opponents in order to see whether there was a balance issue with that particular trait. To be honest I didn't come to a firm conclusion one way or another, but I got some entertaining games out of it. In this one the Unorthodox ships faced vessels powered by steam.

August

Gory Bloodbath - Obviousy I have played HOTT multiple times throughout the year, but sometimes I repurpose the elements for Dragon Rampant. And this was one of those times.

September

Duyfken - In Sydney there is a replica of the 17th century Dutch ship Duyfken. It seemed silly to be an avid Galleys & Galleons player and not to have paid her a visit. And my wife and I did so on one of the days when they sail her around the harbour.

October

Battle Cry - Newmarket - One thing led to another and I found myself getting out my copy of Battle Cry. I used the original figures (I have been using my 6mm in the past few years), but added more terrain to the board to improve the look.

November

A House Divided - Battle Cry led to me starting yet another reread of Shelby Foote's narrative history of the ACW. And that led to a desire to play a more strategic game. So I got out the classic GDW 'A House Divided' and played a couple of games over a week or so.

December

Double-Sized HOTT - December is always a tricky month in this project, because you don't get a feel for the highest view counts on posts until the end of January, but at the time of writing this writeup of a couple of 48AP HOTT games seems to be the most popular. And it's always good, in my mind, to finish a review of another year in the life of this blog with a game of HOTT.

Dances With Wolves

I had a quiet day yesterday, so gave my new wolves a few outings in some games of Palaeo Diet.

I started with a simple hunt. Three hunters are stalking a couple of mammoths, with a couple of wolves waiting in the wings to mess things up.

The hunters split up. The one on the right was tasked with trying to scare the wolves away from the action. They were unimpressed by his efforts, but remained content to watch at this stage.

The others tried to split up the mammoth pair, trying to drive one further away from the wolves so that when the stabbing started the predators would be less inclined to close in for a look.

The mammoths were skittish, though, and even got unsettled enough to attack one of the hunters.

They steadfastly refused to be split up.

A hunter was attacked and injured. The wolves moved a little closer, scenting blood.

One of the hunters managed to wound a mammoth, but was wounded in return. This made the wolves very interested indeed, and they closed rapidly on the action, attacking the third hunter. He wounded the wolf.

Abandoning the mammoth another hunter came to the support of the one being attacked by the wolf, and finished the beast off. The second wolf now came into the attack, and was also wounded.

The two hunters managed to finish off the injured wolf. This gave them enough bulk for a win. With two injured hunters going after a mammoth wasn't really on the cards. The wolves would have to do.

I then had a go at one of the scenarios from the book, in which a group of hunters raid a wolf-den looking to steal puppies (either to train as hunting dogs or as a tasty snack). The den is in the centre of the board, and four wolves are hanging around it. Each of the four hunters enters from one of the corners, and at least two of them have to grab puppies and make it off the edge of the board.

It started badly when the wolves decided that they weren't taking any nonsense today and one of them attacked and approaching hunter.

The hunter got in a hit, but the wolf was faster and it killed him.

Another hunter was attacked. 

With the attention of most of the wolves fixed on the potential feat to the south, the other two hunters were able to reach the den undetected.

The second hunter was also killed, and the wolves all closed in for a feed.

The two hunters to the north grabbed some puppies and headed off home unmolested.

So technically a win for the hunters, even if they did lose two of their number. The wolves dined well.

I played it again, with different terrain.

Again, one of the hunters attracted the attention of a wolf. He wounded the animal, which backed off, and the other wolves came over for a look.

Thoroughly agitated they attacked a second hunter, and killed him (yes, the first one to die in the previous run-through).

And, much as before, this kept the wolves' attention away from their den, allowing the two other hunters a go at grabbing puppies.

Or maybe not. One of the wolves came running back to defend the den.

One hunter evaded the attack and was already well on the way home. The other got away as well. The third hunter was now also closing in on the den, but the wolves were all on their way back.

He got a puppy, and managed to wound one of the wolves attacking him. But he was now injured, and the whole pack were after him.

The end was inevitable.

So the same result as before - two hunters got away with a prize, whilst two became wolf food.

New Beasts

Yesterday I got out my paints and brushes for the first time in months and did a few new animals for Palaeo Diet.

First to be completed were these wolves from Slave2Gaming, part of their Grim Fantasy range. I used some of these in a game back in May, and loved the energetic poses, so I got Drew to bring me a couple of packs when we had our club Christmas meetup last week. So not only have I managed to paint some figures, but I did it within a week of receiving them.

Here's the pack.

The range actually has two different wolf packs (did you see what I did there). One is listed as Dire Wolves, and in it you get these big boys.

The other is just listed as Wolves, and features these lively chaps. They are smaller than the Dire Wolves, as you can see above.

Here's the Dire Wolves with an Irregular Miniatures caveman.

And a couple of the regular wolves as a comparison.

To be honest the size difference isn't too jarring, and I'd generally field both types of figure as a basic pack predator.

The second lot of new figures I did are based on some miniatures I acquired over 20 years ago. Over the past couple of years I've been building up a selection of Australian creatures, and in theory I have something suitable for all of the basic creature types except for the giant grazers. There's not really many options for these in the Australian megafauna, but the most obvious choice is the giant wombat, Diprotodon. So I set out to make some, since you can't get any commercially (this is a hint to any figure manufacturers who may be reading this).

Anyway, to go back to my original statement, I used some small toy bears that I acquired around 20 years ago. Their body shape is about right, as is the size, so the only real issue was their faces which, being bears, are somewhat pointer and more carnivore-like than the wombat/koala-featured Diprotodon. Milliput came to the rescue.

"You've made bears with masks", said my wife.

Anyway, a very quick paint-job later and they ended up like this.

They're not perfect - the original figures is a bit primitive, and my Milliput skills are a little shaky at present - but they'll do. I can always go back and tidy them up another day. And overall I'm happy with how they've turned out. They look the part.

Here they are with my hapless hunter.

I do have a pack of Mike Yarrow short-faced kangaroos to paint as well, which will give me more herd grazers for my collection. The next stage will be to do some hunters to take on all of these Antipodean beasties. It looks like QRF have the molds for the old Feudal Castings Koori miniatures, although they are currently listed as out of stock. If I can get hold of some they will be perfect hunters for an Australian Palaeo Diet game. Until then my new wombats will have to be hunted by my Northern Hemisphere hunters.

Birthday Sharks

Whilst most people spend Christmas Eve getting ready for Christmas day, we spend it celebrating Catherine's birthday, and that usually involves some kind of outing.

This year Catherine had let drop the hint that she wanted to see an extensive exhibition about sharks at the Australian Museum in Sydney, so that's what we did.

It's pretty spectacular; there's lots of information boards and videos, as well as preserved specimens from the museum's collection and some lovely life-sized reproductions of various species.

Anyway, whilst I know that there are people here who would find sharks blog-worthy in their own right, this post was really an excuse to post a few pictures I took that wargamers might find of interest.

Part of the exhibition looked at various Pacific island-groups and nations and how sharks were part of their culture and folklore. I dropped the ball here by not making any notes on some of the mythology and folklore stuff which may of been use to fantasy gamers, but I did get some pictures of some of the weapons and armour on display.

These are two-handed cutting weapons from Kiribati. They're a decent size and, as you can see, edged with shark-teeth.

To protect against them, the natives of Kiribati wore suits of armour. This was made up of a set of overalls and sleeves made from coconut fibre, with a coconut fibre cuirass worn over the top. The  cuirass had a high backboard to protect from attack from behind, and was often worn with thick belts made from woven coconut fiber or dried ray skin to protect the vital organs. The armour decorated, either with human hair, feathers or shells.

The armour was worn with a helmet mad from a dried puffer-fish.

Warriors also sometimes carried knuckle-dusters edged with shark-teeth. These are from Hawaii.

This is a small club or hand-weapon from Hawaii.

For those that love the bizarre, this is a reconstruction of Helicoprion, an extinct shark from the Permian shark with a distinctive helical lower jaw. As the shark closed its lower jaw, the teeth would fold back into the mouth, dragging and cutting anything the shark had caught. It is thought that whilst it fed on soft-bodied animals, it could also use this jaw to deshell such creatures as nautilids, ammonites and belemnites.

And, finally, here is the birthday-girl herself, standing inside a reconstruction of a Megalodon jaw.